Diana feared Dodi’s father was spying on them on cruise

PRINCESS Diana feared her boyfriend’s father was spying on her as the couple took a luxurious Mediterranean cruise, Diana’s sister revealed yesterday.

The princess believed the yacht she and Dodi Fayed were vacationing aboard had been bugged by Dodi’s father, Mohammed Al Fayed, her sister Sarah McCorquodale told an inquest investigating Diana and Dodi’s deaths.

“She thought the boat was being bugged by Mr Al Fayed senior,” said Ms McCorquodale, telling the court that Diana shared the concern during a phone conversation from the yacht.

Ms McCorquodale said she assumed the princess was talking over a mobile phone.

Diana, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, died in Paris after their car slammed into a pillar in the Pont d’Alma tunnel on August 31, 1997.

While French and British investigators blamed Mr Paul for the crash, Mohammed Al Fayed maintains the couple were victims of a plot masterminded by Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband.

Much of the testimony at the inquest has centered on the question of whether or not anyone was eavesdropping on the princess, and the nature of her relationship with Philip, her father-in-law at the time she was married to Prince Charles.

Meanwhile, a wooden chest belonging to Diana was shown to the jury.

But the box was empty.

It was the second time the object, nicknamed the “Crown Jewels” and “Pandora’s Box”, has been viewed in a court, after appearing at butler Paul Burrell’s aborted Old Bailey trial in 2002.

Heavy enough to leave an usher breaking a sweat as he lugged it into Court 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice, it was opened to give the jury a glimpse inside.

The jury saw how there was a hidden compartment inside, large enough to contain letters or documents.

The princess’s sister insisted that letters were not inside the box when she opened it, but a note of a conversation she had with a policeman suggests they were.

What it did contain, according to Ms McCorquodale, was a “thick wodge” of Diana’s divorce papers, a man’s signet ring from her former lover James Hewitt, a resignation letter from her most senior aide and a set of tapes of revelations from a former servant.